Our bikes are the most important parts of our gear that we are carrying. Better said: what is carrying us! So far (I am writing this after 9000 12000 16500km/ 56007500 10,000 miles) they have been excellent and we had zero problems.

At Santos, you can custom-build your bike. They produce the most praised travel bike, the Travelmaster series, available in Alu/ChoMo and 26/28 inch wheelsize, in several framesizes.

You can choose framesize, wheelsize, colours (about 26 now!) and almost all parts to suit your taste, functionality wishes or budget. Note that a bike is not just a collection of parts, the good builders of Santos are what have made the difference: the rims are still perfectly straight and no spoke has been broken (after 9000 16,500km).

The most important decisions will be the gear-system and the frame sizes:

The Rohloff internal gearhub

We have chosen for the Rohloff Gearhub. What is that? It means that all the gears are inside the back hub. There are 14 gears, evenly spaced and no derailleur, not in front, nor in the back. See this image for how this looks inside if you manage to open it up (and clean it :))

This has the following advantages over a regular say, 3×8 gears Shimano/Campagnolo system with derailleur:

Though there are ‘only’ 14 gears, all gears can be used and are different, unlike the regular Shimano systems. As you can not use the gears where the chain has to ‘cross’ on a Shimano system and there are many gears that overlap or are very close, effectively the 14 Rohloff gears are the same as the 24 with derailleur

There is only one grip-shift handle (on the right handle bar usually) 1-14 and you can go from one end to the other in one go if needed. No messing about with one hand shifting forward, the other back and then change everything if you need to go one gear lighter. Just go lighter or heavier, as simple as that.

You can change gears when standing still. Especially with a heavy loaded bike, this is a huge advantage, as you can shift back in a lighter gear and go after a stop for a traffic light, cow, pothole or cactus.

The chain never changes position and lasts much longer. We changed the first chains after 7000km (4500miles) only because I was tired of carrying 2 spare chains along, they were not finished by far. We use KMC chains, they are strong.

There is no ‘loose part’ like a derailleur, that will break off when transported in a plane, bus, train, chicken-truck or whatever. Everything is inside the black box.

The Rohloff system has some disadvantages as well:

It is more expensive up front. Usually it increases the costs of your bike with about $1000, depending on your alternative. But as they are guaranteed to 100.000km (60.000 miles), in the end you pay less than when replacing your Shimano’s or Campi’s when going the same distances. The Rohloff is cheaper at about 60,000km or more (See the calculations on the Santos site, in Dutch here).

It is literally a black box. If something breaks, you are screwed and will likely need to replace the entire hub.

It needs to be broken in. The heavier you are and more power you use, the quicker that goes, usually within 1000km/600miles all runs perfectly.

It needs maintenance, though not much: every 5000km (3000miles), you need to replace the oil inside the hub. This takes only a few minutes and is very simple though it can be hard to find the Rohloff oil that is needed, you might have to bring it (as we did) or have some sent ahead by your dealer (as we did as well).

I used the system on my previous bike and never want back to the derailleur system again, Rohloff makes life so much easier. No more cleaning or fixing of the derailleur, always easy to find the right gear.

Note that many other bike makers do not use all the advantages as they need a ‘tension’ wheel to keep the chain tight (as there is no derailleur to do so). Santos uses an excentric front axle, which can be changed (turned) easily to keep a worn-in chain at the right tension.

Frame

We use the size 19 inch Aluminium frame, with 26 inch wheels . 26 inch is simply the most used wheel size outside of Europe, and therefore it will be easier to find replacement tires.

Some people recommended against aluminium frames as they might be harder to fix when they break (though note that many of the current ‘steel’ frames might be so specialized that they also cannot be fixed easily). But Robbert from Santos told us: ‘They do not break! And if there is any problem, we will send a new one’. Cool.

Tires

For serious touring cyclists there is only one real brand: Schwalbe. We use the Schwalbe Marathon XR. They are slow tires (not for racing), but so are we. Our main concern is flat and/or worn out tires.

After 9000km (5500 miles), Ivana had 4 flats, I had 2, one in each tire. They still look great. Nuff said.

Other parts:

Brakes: Magura HS33 hydraulic brakes. UPDATE: After 16,000km a metal casing of one of the brakes broke, while in Venezuela. Not sure why it cracked as there was no force, but maybe because of transport (boat/pick-up/truck) of the bikes had hit it repeatedly. Anyway, Magura replied to my email immediately, and had their USA part send a new part by UPS immediately, so about a week later we were good to go. No questions, asked, just excellent customer service and warranty (they said that similar problem had been reported only twice before during many years and hundreds of thousands of brakes sold).

For the rest we have really enjoyed our brakes, only replaced the first set of pads after 16,000km and zero problems with leaking etc. Simply the best.

Ballhead: Chris King. I am not a bike expert. But if all people who are tell you this is the best, I accept it.

Bracket for crank: SKF (see comments for ballhead)

Cranks: Truvativ Five D single speed

Chain: KMC gold

Pedals: Shimano DX platform. Large and comfortable with boots or sandals, no click system. Note that after 8000km I changed these for dual-SPD pedals from Shimano, to try to improve my foot position, but Ivana still has them.

Handle bars: Trekking multiposition adjustable. + Ergon MP1 supports. We love the Ergon and the butterfly handle bars, but all the adjustable stuff is overkill and waste of weight and money, as we have never adjusted anything anytime.

Fork: TravelMaster Cr-Mo. We could have taken suspension, but decided not too; it can break and will be deadweight. We have a little seatpost suspension instead which works great.

17 October 2008: Vancouver to Victoria, 75 km

The weather gods did not want us to leave Vancouver, maybe they thought I should rest more. Wind and rain pounded on us when we made our way to the ferries in the Southwestern point of the mainland of Canada. we had taken the monorail East first as the direct route would have led us through the George Massey Tunnel, off limits for cyclists. The shuttle for cyclist had stopped for the season and we did not think that any bus could take our heavy bikes on their frontloading rack. we could not lift them up there anyways

After about 30km through mainly flat and wet land we ended up at the ferry, just in time for a 14.00 departure. It takes about 90 minutes to cross the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island, the largest island on the West side of North America.

The Lochside Trail, turning into the Galloping Goose trail later on, starts right outside the ferry terminal and is a great way to see a bit of the island. It is an old rail track, sometimes unpaved, sometimes crossing roads and even wooden trestles but always very scenic for all its 35km. We saw deer along the car-free trail, many flocks of geese and fields full of pumpkins. we enjoyed it so much that we ended up entering in Victoria in the dark…

We stayed 2 nights with our great Warm Showers list hosts, Mark & Cathy. They took us to a nice little Farmer’s market, one of the last of the season. It is nice to see that more young people are supporting the local farmers and eating healthy produce, even though it costs more than the preprocessed and mass-produced ‘food’ from the larger supermarket chains. I feel that our generation (at least a part of it) realizes that we should value fuel for our own system more than that for our cars… Read more

Where and When

Where are you going?

The plan is to cycle through America, from the North of Alaska to the South of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Note that America is not the same as the USA. We want to see America and the USA is one country on these two continents.

Straight down?

Well, straight down is impossible, you would hit water already in Alaska, but even in a straight line is not possible. The fastest route would be more or less straight to Panama, fly or sail to Colombia, then down the west coast of South America, over the PanAmericana.

So how far is that, 16.000km, about 10,000 miles?

It might be if you could go straight down. We think we will have cycled at least double that distance (about 35000km) as we want to visit every country on the mainland, so including all the small countries on Central America and all the larger countries in South America.

We will not cycle every day, we will take longer rests in interesting places, so our average will likely be around 50km/day or even less.

How long will this trip take?

We think about 2.5 years, give or take a few months.

Why 2.5 years, why not 2 or 3 years?

We have to start in Alaskan summer, so July (June is considered Spring, August Fall, the rest is winter in Alaska). As the Southern hemisphere has reversed seasons and we want to arrive in summer as well, we need either 1.5, 2.5 or 3.5 years. 1.5 is too fast, 3.5 a bit slow…

In Tibet. She was cycling from Malaysia to India, I was climbing Mt Everest. We got engaged two years later on the summit of Kilimanjaro, 3 weeks before the start of this cycle trip.

Tibet? Kilimanjaro? Eh, ok. So you like travelling. Where else have you cycled before?

Ivana has made one very long trip: first around New Zealand, then from Malaysia to India, passing Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China, Tibet & Nepal on the way. Then she cycled for a month in Turkey and has also cycled in France.

Together we cycled in Italy for a month.

I (Harry) was raised in the Netherlands, so was practically born and raised on bicycles. Previously I have not made any very long cycle trips, but have done some shorter touring of 2-3 weeks per trip (Belgium – Normandy – Jersey -England; Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland – Scotland; Amsterdam – Zermatt on a tandem).

What bicycles do you use?

We ride on the perfect travel bike: Dutch made to order Santos Travel master, aluminium frame, 26″ wheels. Tubus racks and Ortlieb bags see for more details the gear pages.

Website:

How does this website work?

well you found the FAQ, so you seem to have some idea already. On the homepage you see 4 tabs with a photo and shortcuts to the last 4 posts.

You can check older trip reports in may ways: check archives, trip reports, search for words, browse by categories (the second/lower top menu) or use the tags system, which is a bit more detailed than the categories.

You can contact us through the contact form and we love feedback on our posts, so please leave some comments when you read the posts. You will be asked to verify that you are a human being (and not a spam robot) by typing some random code. Though this might be difficult and annoying, it saves us hours of time and helps to control spam.

Will you write reports every day?

We will try but already know that it will not be possible as we will be too tired, to grumpy, too out of battery power, or too far away from any internet connection. So likely we will write in batches, whenever we have a few hours or day off and post them when needed.

So do I need to check every day to see if you updated something?

No, you can make it much easier to follow us: either add our RSS feed to your feed reader, so you get a notice when a new feed is available

If you have no idea what RSS is, just subscribe to our mailinglist and get a maximum of one email every day new updates are posted. You can do this on every page, see the box at the right side, near the top of the page or just click here.

World On A Bike .com is just easier to remember and to tell people. It automatically forwards to the real website which is located at harry.biketravellers.com. On http://BikeTravellers.com everybody that cycles can open a free weblog (yourname.biketravellers.com), try it yourself, many others have already done so.

Do not forget that our penguin friend Pablito is also joining us and he makes his own reports as well, sometimes in English, mostly in Spanish, check out his website here: http://Pablito.biketravellers.com

What are those ‘Google Ads’ I see on many pages?

These are small advertisements, supplied by Google. We do not choose them, the content is based on the content of the page, so a page about Alaska will give you ads about Alaska tours or land. It might show things we do not support, like drilling for oil in Alaska.

Every time somebody clicks on them, we get a few cents, which helps to pay for our website costs. So if you are interested in the ads, please check tem out as you are helping us.

Do not just click a lot of ads just to help us, as Google might ban our account if some people repeatedly click our ads from the same computer/IP address. So only check the ones that are interesting to you.

How & costs & support

How can you afford such a trip?

We spend much less than you think, we saved some money the past years and might make some more on the way.

So, how much will you spend?

North America will be the most expensive: until we reach Mexico, we will spend about $15 per day (together). This means less than $3000 in the first 6 months.

Then from Mexico down it will probable be less than half of that.

In total should be less than $10,000 together for the entire trip.

That is less than my parents spent on a luxury 2-week safari trip last year! How come you can live so cheap?

We do not need much. We have our tent, so we do not need to pay for hotels. We camp out in the wild or at people’s lawn’s, so do not pay for expensive campsites. We will stay in cheap hostels in cities -in central America, you can get these for a few dollars-, but will also do a lot of Couchsurfing/Hospitality clubbing/ WarmShowering: staying with people for free, in return we will host them later.

We cook ourselves, so all we need is some pasta, some veggies and some candy bars to get us through the day. We drink water we get from people or take it from streams and purify it with our Steripen. We recharge our batteries using our SolarSupra solar panel. We never buy bottled water, that is a waste of money and plastic.

We do not have an expensive taste and have no space for souvenirs on our bikes, so all we take home are pictures and memories.

Our sponsors supplied us with most of our gear, so we had little costs up front.

It is still a lot of money, don’t you have any other costs as well?

We do not have kids, we do not have a car and have no debts, we never bought and will not buy anything we cannot afford. We have a house, but that is rented out so almost pays for itself.

So things we need to pay are: food & drinks. Sometimes camping fees (mostly we camp in the wild or on people’s lawns); Internet connections along the way, spare parts for our bikes; replacements for clothes we wore out; park fees; visa fees; entry fees for places we want to visit etc.

It is hard to plan exactly how much we will spend, but we want to see things along the way and will buy some dinners or breakfasts along the way when we are too tired or lazy to cook or think we deserved it after cycling another 1000km or a tough day. Basically we are on a tight budget, but will not let this stop us from enjoying the places we visit.

Is there any way we can support your trip?

Yes! Many ways, first of all you can sign up for our newsletter or RSS feed. Forward them to others that might enjoy reading travel stories, stories about people and culture, cycling, environmental issues, America.

Leave comments on the posts. We love to read them, they keep us going. Small notes from friends and strangers are huge boosts for our confidence and can help us through rough and difficult times.

Just think of this website as a free interactive travel magazine subscription. If you enjoy reading our stories and seeing our photos, you can thank us by donating some money using the form on the right side of every post and page, using PayPal or credit card. Every small amount is welcome, just think what you would spend on a magazine or book.

Check out the Google ads if there is something interesting for you (do not click them all just to help, see notes above).

Link to our websites or specific reports or photos from your own website or blog. Add us to Stumble Upon, ReddIt, Digg etc. get the word out that it is possible to travel by bicycle!

after we woke up in our church, we noticed that it was actually dry! Not only that, but the weather improved during the day. Oh, how life is so much easier with some sun. I know we will curse it later when in the heat of central America, but for now it was very welcome.

We passed quite a few roadhouses and motels, that were either closed for the season or closed altogether. Seems that the combination of higher gas prices (increasing the costs for the generators and heating) and lower number of tourists (also partly because of higher gas prices) already has put many businesses out of business. Still some smaller business like the Cappucino house at the Gakona Junction seemed to survive. Shame that most clients never leave their car and stop to talk with the friendly ladies that run the wildly decorated place. Louise warned us for the many wild bears that were on the coming stretch and showed us some photos of a bear on the side of the road that apparently was not afraid of humans at all, taken a few days before…

We had stopped for some internet at Gakona Roadhouse, a nice historic place in a beautiful setting. It was comfortable to stay there, but the late evening sun convinced us to go a bit further and so we managed to see the beautiful sunsets over the Wrangell-StElias national park, with its 2 dominant peaks (from this side) Mt Drum and Mt Stanford. Read more

We both had a very strong love-hate relationship with the Denali Highway. It is a bit over 200km/130mi long, but 80% of this is unpaved. Sometimes tougher than the Dalton, wilder than the Denali park road, and wetter than the Netherlands :). ladies & gentlemen, we offer you: The Denali Highway in pictures, with some words as well…

It started out ok, with some nice roads from Cantwell, but soon the gravel came back with full force. Ivana had a bad day, so I just stayed away from her; I bit on front or a bit in the back. That is usually the best thing to do, when one of us has an ‘angry day’, when all roads are terrible, the legs won’t work or rain seems to hit you every minute. I was actually enjoying this road a lot.

It was nice to be away from the main traffic again. almost no people live here, rental cars are not allowed to drive these roads and trucks have nowhere to go to here, so all cars you see are travellers or hunters. All of them wave back when we wave at them and many stop for a chat. The landscape is simply stunning: from high mountains (even though most were hidden in thick, rainy clouds) to taiga forests and age -old glaciers. We cycled through valleys, crossed big rivers, saw al kinds of wildlife and met friendly people. We got rained upon, almost froze our hands and feet, downhilled in the dark and found cyclists’ heaven, all in a few days. Almost too much to process. Pictures do not do justice, but I will share a few, together with some short stories from the road: Read more

14th July

Happy B-day Shaunie Shiny Shoes and PJW!

The first hour was flat but muddy, which made it hard going and slow. At least, there were not too many mosquitos while cycling, so we could leave the headnets off. Suddenly the hils were back in full force.

Dalton Highway Rule #8 for cyclists: if a hill has a name, it is mostly bad news as it will be very steep..

We were definitely nearing the Brooks Range now. The vague shapes we had seen in the distance were coming into focus and turned out to be nice mountains. The road meandered through but was already slowly going up as well. The road looked friendly, but the many remains of exploded tired reminded of what the Information booklet had told us: Read more

You lose all sense of time when it doesn’t get darker at night. The sun doesn’t set at 70 degrees North, but just circles around you like a vulture above a fresh kill. As we do not have watches, only our cycle computers and Lenny could tell us what time it was. The other cyclists were buys packing as they were on the 08.00 tour, but as our tour only started 6 hours later, we enjoyed the extra hours to relax for the first time in weeks.

When we finally headed over to the Caribou Inn, they had already finished and were preparing for their trip. As a biketraveller, you have to take care with your money, as you never know where you might need it. That is why we were hesitant to attack the $18 lunch buffet that the cyclists had raved about. Once we took our group picture outside and said goodbye to the others, we had made up our mind to feast; but we were too late as lunch was over.

Only then we found the hidden secret of the Caribou Inn: the packed lunch. For $10 you could take a quite large paper bag and fill it with whatever you like. I am sure they had no idea how many salmonburgers, hamburgers, ham/cheese & salami sandwiches, chocolate cake, yogurt, fruit juice and potato salad a pair of cyclists could fit in just one bag Read more

Jacobsons is a daughter of AGU. Jacobsons imports great cycling brands like Nalini, GripGrab, Carrera and many more, see below for an overview. When they heard about our plans they worked hard to get us all the gear we needed. Former manager Mario moved mountains and set us up with the perfect gear.

For cyclists there is only one brand of panniers: Ortlieb (www.ortlieb.com). These are proven time after time and are the strongest and most durable panniers around.

Carrera supplies beautiful and still fucntional eyewear and helmets

Of course our Santos bikes already came with the only real racks available: Tubus

English

The Holiday biker

Cycling is fun!

An increasing amount of people choose a sportive holiday under one’s own power. With the wind blowing trough your hair, enjoying the beauty surrounding you, you feel free as a bird on your bicycle. De Vakantiefietser helps you along with enthusiastic stories, a well fitted bike, practical equipment, advice and expertise.

Bicycle trekking equipment

From waterproof panniers to cycle maps, from gasoline burner to
down sleeping bags, from unbreakable carrier racks to self-inflating
mattresses and from breathable rain jackets to puncture proof tires, we
have everything in the house.
What to think of a headlight, waterproof socks, compact tool, bicycle
trailer, synthetic towels, luggage net, water bag, first aid set,
universal bath stop or camera stand for on your handlebar.

Holiday bicycles

What
kind of bicycle is suitable for you not only depends on the duration of your trip and the destination, but also on your budget. It makes quite a difference whether you are going on a world trip, or go on bike holiday to France.
That is why we have bicycles in different qualities and price
categories: idworx, Koga Miyata, Koga Signature, Santos, Snel, Van Nicholas and VSF. Besides that we are the specialist in The Netherlands for a trekking bike with Rohloff speed hub.
Delivery for a new bike is from one to eight weeks.

Cycle guides, maps and travels

In our book cupboards are hundreds of bicycle guides. Apart from Dutch guides, we also have German and English guides and travel stories. Our maps are especially selected for cyclists. So you will not leave our shop with a walking or car map.
On our coffee table there are (next to the ‘negerzoenen’) brochures of a number of cycle travel companies. We do not sell travels, but we can help you finding the most suitable travel organisation for you.

About Eric Schuijt

Eric Schuijt cycled through more than eighty countries and wrote four books about these travels.
In his shop, De Vakantiefietser, you can find your trekking bike, as
well as your complete bike trekking equipment and travels. All the
employees at De Vakantiefieter cycled all over the world. Eric and
his staff can serve you with their expertise because of many years of
experience with bike trekking.

Friend-of-Eric-card

You don’t want back and neck pains or painful wrists? On our
measuring frame we find your ideal frame size and the most convenient
adjustment of your bicycle. If you’re busy during our opening
hours, we can also serve you at a time that suits you better.
Every customer who buys a bicycle receives the Friend-of-Eric-card.
This entitles you to a discount on your travel equipment. And if you
have problems with your bicycle while you are on holiday, we will send
you the necessary parts.

Activities

Almost every Tuesday-evening we organise an activity in the shop like:

Bicycle maintenance for when you’re on the way;

Basic course bicycle maintenance;

Workshop ‘preparations for a bicycle holiday’;

Workshop ‘preparations for a long bicycle trip’;

Readings about bicycle trekking from enthusiastic bicycle travellers

On this website

you can find information on

Advise about equipment, bicycles and bicycle clothing,

Tips for buying a trekking bicycle,

Packing list,

Agenda of activities,

Travel impressions,

Books and maps via internet,

Links to websites which are interesting for trekking cyclists.

Everything is written in Dutch, but with the help of Babelfish, you can at least understand what I have written.

Address

De Vakantiefietser is located in the centre and is not far from the Central Station.

A trip like ours needs a few basic things: first of all determination, but close second is good gear. It is no use trying to make do, for a good trip, you need good material.

Without the help of the following people and companies the trip would not have been possible. They have not only supplied us with the best gear available, but also have kept us focused on our first goal: to get started! Most if not all of the people are cyclists or sportsmen and -women and they have not just donated their products but also their time and enthusiasm, which is priceless .

First of all our bicycles. No compromise here, we wanted the best as we will test them to the max. The only suitable solution is Santos Bikes. Our machines are the best and totally custombuilt. Please read more about Santos and its owner Robbert and their custom configuration tool here.

A great new laptop, almost designed for our wishes was supplied by Lenovo laptops

Outdoordacht has sponsored all types of gear, with the solarpanel being the ultimate green-travel tool

Elephant Drive has sponsored a year of free use of the Elephantdrive solutions, really a weight off our shoulders to know our back-ups are safe.

AdventureFood has supplied us with great tasty meals to survive the first two weeks in the wild of Alaska

De VakantieFietser has helped us with advice, gear and a sense of humour to get us started in the right direction

We are still looking for financial support as our trip is very costly, not just our daily cost of living, but also internet access, server hosting etc. any donations are welcome, or if you want us to give special attention to our products (of course only if they are useful for cyclists!) contact us using the form above.

If you are interested in related products and links, check out the Google advertisements that appear on every page as you will help us at the same time